James L. Brooks has had a celebrated career, co-creating classic series including The Simpsons and directing movies like As Good as It Gets and Terms of Endearment, which won him an Academy Award for Best Director. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they can all be great. Ella McCay is the latest project from Brooks, hitting the 2025 movie calendar on December 12. Critics have seen the political dramedy, and their reviews are pretty harsh, calling the movie “borderline abysmal” and a “sloppy slog.”
Ella McCay is set in 2008 and stars Sex Education’s Emma Mackey as the title character who suddenly is appointed governor. As she navigates her new position, she faces challenges including a potential scandal and accidentally getting high on her brother’s edibles. Playing on one of the director’s hits, Nick Schager of the Daily Beast calls it “as bad as it gets,” and, according to Schager, that may be wittier than anything he saw in Ella McCay, which is lacking charm but full of generic, hokey idealism. He continues:
